CompuServe Thread

#A-MaxIV Start-up failure

7 messages in this thread
#133763From: Peter JonesFeb 25, 1994 5:56 PM
Looking for help with A-MaxIV. I have installed the card in an A4000/40. Since I can access Amiga disks ok in DF0: I assume that I have correctly fitted the floppy disk drive cables. When I boot up A-MaxIV I get the first screen with the small disk icon in the middle, but instead of a face it displays a black, flashing cross. Inserting a Mac disk in DF0: causes the black cross to stop flashing while an attempt is made to read the disk (DF0: lamp illuminated). When the lamp goes out, the cross resumes flashing. Advice appreciated. Pete Jones, flying on AutoPilot from Brussels, Belgium
#133855From: Karl F. KugelFeb 26, 1994 4:32 AM
That is typical Mac behavior when it can't find a system disk to boot from. Have you mounted your Mac partition before running AMax? What happens when you insert the Mac "System Tools" disk?
#133905From: Peter JonesFeb 26, 1994 3:19 PM
Karl, Yes. You are right. I was inserting a system 7 install disk, and it didn't like it cos it was only double density (I assume). I have now obtained the 1.4mb installer disks, and I got as far as installing the system on a hard disk partition. When it finished I clicked on the restart button and the system froze. I rebooted the amiga, then booted amax again. It got as far as the welcome to Macintosh message, then the power light flickered and I got a software error 8000 0003 and had to reboot again. Same thing on the next try except the message was 8000 0004. I am now trying to get a minimum system disk on floppy, but there seems to be a high sensitivity on floppy disk recognition. It recognised the blank formatted floppy the first time, but once I started swapping with the install disk it steadfastly refused to recognise the destination disk any more. (sight) It's very frustrating, and a great shame that ReadySoft isn't in the Vendor Forum.
#133986From: Karl F. KugelFeb 26, 1994 10:20 PM
Boy, that sounds bad. I can't help you there, when I installed AMaxIV I already had an AMax-formatted partition. I just changed the driver specified in the mountlist, specified my normal driver in the AMax SCSI preferences screen, and everything worked fine. -Karl Speaking from the Rubble.
#134054From: Peter JonesFeb 27, 1994 6:31 AM
Since the partition I set up was on a SCSI drive, my next step will be to try to put system 7 on the original A4000 IDE drive. Ho, Hum, never say die! Pete Jones, flying on AutoPilot from Brussels, Belgium
#134080From: Barbara KenneyFeb 27, 1994 9:32 AM
I am not an expert in this, but when I first tried to install System 7.1 on my AmaxIV I had a lot of problems, but for some strange reason it worked the fourth time! I agree that there is a very high sensitivity to floppy disk recognition and that changing disks with Amax frequently does not work. My impression in general is that if I move the disk icon to the trash (as opposed to "ejecting" the disk via menu) it is more dependable. I guess this is hard to do with the install program however. I never found out what I did the fourth time that I did not do earlier other than to be persistent. Did you mount and select boot disk from the Amax startup program?
#134145From: Peter JonesFeb 27, 1994 3:02 PM
Barbara, I finally managed to get the system up and running. The "slight" problem remaining is that when I select RESTART from the menu the system locks up and I have to reboot, If i select SHUT DOWN, the screen goes black and I have to reboot. I notice that I am using version 4.00 of the A-MaxIV software. I have seen on the forum that 4.007 is already out. What version do you have? Pete Jones, flying on AutoPilot from Brussels, Belgium